Weak local residuals as smoothness indicators for the shallow water equations

Abstract

Abstract The system of shallow water equations admits infinitely many conservation laws. This paper investigates weak local residuals as smoothness indicators of numerical solutions to the shallow water equations. To get a weak formulation, a test function and integration are introduced into the shallow water equations. We use a finite volume method to solve the shallow water equations numerically. Based on our numerical simulations, the weak local residual of a simple conservation law with a simple test function is identified to be the best as a smoothness indicator.